


On Wet Paper Wings

by Icosagens



Series: Voyager 1 [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: Coping, DamianLovesHisGrandpa2020, Ex-Spy and Ex-Assassin Bonding, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Historical References, Lilo and Stitch References, Love Languages, Nightmares, Pre-Reboot, Tea, The Good Old Days, Trauma, arthurian legends, sword discussions as an olive branch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:47:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26034415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icosagens/pseuds/Icosagens
Summary: "Pennyworth..." Damian starts, but then thinks the better of it; he shelves his teeth together and stifles his breath."Master Damian," Pennyworth returns, and blessedly, does not move to put a hand on his shoulder, nor touch him in any way. There is silence, soft but wispy, like nimbuses, but then he breaks it, then he says, "Master Damian, you are not your ghosts."Damian would do well to suppress the full-body shudder which ossifies within him. He does not repress the full-body shudder which ossifies within him."Well, Pennyworth," he says, "you would do well to remember the same."
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Damian Wayne
Series: Voyager 1 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1889794
Comments: 17
Kudos: 81
Collections: Damian Loves His Grandpa Challenge 2020





	On Wet Paper Wings

**Author's Note:**

> find the post for the #DamianLovesHisGrandpa2020 challenge [here](https://geminibabyhere.tumblr.com/post/624636260072423424/damian-loves-his-grandpa-challenge-2020).
> 
> \+ i have not slept in literally three days, so i am going to bed _now_ , and editing this _later_ [still unedited as of 24 Aug].
> 
> \+ please ignore the fact that i said this was preboot, and yet mentioned ravi from _son of batman_ anyway. continuity and consistency? never met them.

He wakes up choking on his own blood, only to find that the only blood in his mouth comes from scrapes on his cheeks and tongue. With an afforded few moments, in which it curdles in his mouth like quicksilver, he extricates himself from the tangled mass of sheet that he could have sworn he had fallen asleep on top of, and slips toward the bathroom.

There's a drill that he goes through: he turns on the tap, hot water only, and runs his hands under it. Once it reaches an optimum boiling point, he begins to scrub. It is a subconscious instinct, by this point. Intermittently he will pump soap onto his hands and suds them up, but mostly, they remain under the water's scalding bullwhip.

In the early days, when it was just Grayson, Pennyworth, Drake, and him; when it eventually became sans Drake, he would do this nigh on every night. And each time, he’d get caught. The first time Grayson had turned off the water and cupped Damian’s hands in his, so much larger, Damian had sucker punched him in the stomach, and ran. His face had burned with all of the intensity of Venus’ blistering rocks.

But, as Grayson persisted, he would let him sit with him, sometimes. He banished him to sitting in the bathtub, while Damian sat on the other side of the barrier, in the beginning, but eventually he allowed him to hold him, and rock him back and forth.

Grayson never told him it was going to be OK. Some nights he would fill the room with meaningless chatter. Others, he would just let the quiet _be._

Damian, as weak as it was, held those nights close.

Then, Grayson left, and Damian would sever his own foot from his body before he allowed Father to be made awares of his shameful behavior—Grayson hardly counted as a person—so he found himself left to his own devices.

It wasn’t hard to slip back into old habits.

So he lets this fiery affliction rain upon his hands, and stares at his reflection in the mirror. He traces the bags under his eyes, which look like they came about by someone had taken a charcoal pencil and rubbed as hard as they could.

Pennyworth is as trained in the art of the quiet footstep as any warrior worth their salt, but Damian’s ears are keen enough to catch them several seconds before there is a knock on the door.

He does not bother to turn the water off, nor halt in his actions.

“Can I help you, Pennyworth?” he asks, and genuinely, for once, he does not mean for it to come out sounding as barbed as it does.

“I should be asking you that, Master Damian,” says Pennyworth. “Have I your permission to open the door?”

Damian shoves his thumbs under the spigot, causing flecks of what might as well be burning coals to spray across his nightshirt.

“Do as you will,” says Damian.

The doorknobs are always well-oiled, so there is not even a _creak!_ as it is gently turned and pushed open. Pennyworth’s presence, mellow and stalwart as ever, accrues behind him, not even a flicker in its strength.

With deft footsteps: toe, heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, Pennyworth steps to his side. He leaves a stunningly satisfactory amount of space between them, something Damian finds himself stifling gratefulness for.

“Master Damian,” Pennyworth queries, “would you mind terribly if I reached over you and turned off the water?”

If only the water would go hotter. Damian finds himself needing a more ardent numbness to the hand.

“Do as you will,” he says.

Pennyworth does as he says he will. After, he steps back, and is still. It is only when Damian’s hands begin to _feel_ what he had just put them through, that he speaks.

“Perhaps you would be inclined to follow me to the kitchen,” Pennyworth says. It’s in a spectacularly non-offensive voice.

“Why…?” Damian finds himself asking. It has no bite to it.

“I believe a cup of tea would do you good at the moment, young Master.”

“Can it be doodh pati?” Damian—well, he blurts. Doodh pati is— _home._ Resisting the urge to scrub at his cheeks, he meets Pennyworth’s eyes in the mirror. Take your aim, fire away.

Pennyworth says, “I am happy to make that for you, so long as you are willing to teach me,” and Damian, despite himself, untenses, just a hair.

“I suppose I can do that,” he says, “I hope you are an ept student, however. I have little patience for slow learners.”

Pennyworth holds a stiff upper lip at any given moment, and yet now, Damian notes that it twitches upward. “I will do my best, Master Damian,” he says.

“Prove yourself with actions, not words,” Damian retorts. Still, when Pennyworth slips out of the bathroom, and then slips out of Damian’s room, and then treads through hallways that sizzle like Jack-in-the-boxes, he follows.

When they arrive at the kitchen, Pennyworth, always so stringent about leaving the door closed— _”It is_ improper, _Master Timothy,”_ —studies Damian, for a moment, before pushing it against the wall.

He wants to take him by the neck and snap it like a wine stem, for that, but were it closed, he would want to snap his _own_ neck like a wine stem, so he bites down on the urge and masticates until it is strewn before him in itty bitty pieces.

Instead, Damian moves past him and unhooks a pan from above the stove. He sets it on the stove, and moves to grapple with the spice and tea cabinet. Salt, pepper, oregano. Parsley, cinnamon, rosemary. It is fit to strip a wood board clean of algae.

The tea selection is rather more varied, and he finds himself puttering through it, feeling like a young child left alone on a bustling street, too caught in the drumbeat of his heart to soar with the colors.

“I believe I may be able to help you in your intrepid search for the correct ingredients,” says Pennyworth. “What is it that you are looking for?”

“Do you have cardamom,” Damian asks. "And Lipton?"

Pennyworth takes several, careful steps to his side, and appraises the cabinet. “Yes,” he says, “I have black and green cardamom, and black and green Lipton. They also carry a leaf collection they call 'chai,' though I assume that word means something very different to you.”

"Chai?" Damian asks; it is softer than he means for it to come out. At the inquisitive raise of Pennyworth’s eyebrow once again stomps on the urge to give into cheeks that are beginning to feel like dying stars, painfully bright, and more direly, painfully hot. “I need black tea. And green cardamom.”

Reaching upward, Pennyworth pulls a jar from a shelf far above Damian’s reach. “Here you are, young Master,” he says, and hands it to him.

“... Thank you, Pennyworth,” Damian says.

“Coming to your aid is always my pleasure, Master Damian,” Pennyworth replies. Damian knows that it is the punctilious, genteel duty of butlers to say such things, but he cannot help the feeling that warm nectar has begun to flow through his veins. Digging his fingers into his palms, and creating crescent moons of the inflamed, red sort, he determinedly takes the tea and spice from Pennyworth’s warm, weathered hands, and sets it on the counter.

He tells Pennyworth, “All else required is milk, and sugar.”

And Pennyworth, immediately, asks, “How much?”

Studying the tortoiseshell pattern of the countertop, getting lost in flecks of black ink and sprawling gray peaks, Damian thinks, for a moment. “Three teaspoons of sugar, and six hundred fifty milliliters of milk. Whole milk,” he says.

To Pennyworth’s credit, he does not point out the fact that one-hundred fifty milliliters of milk makes enough tea for more than one person. Instead, he makes his way to the fridge with a passing, “I would presume so,” and pulls a jug from the fridge. It scintillates under the refractory glow of the kitchen lights, creating shadow puppets on the wall.

Setting it to the side, he procures a one cup measuring utensil, a teaspoon, and sugar. In deft trips, he conveys milk from the jug to the pan, and then, correctly, sets it to a low boil.

“We wait, now,” Damian informs him. Slipping between two cabinets, he sinks into a crouch, and crosses his arms over his stomach.

He expects Pennyworth to busy himself with other kitchenly activities, or perhaps, even more so, even, leave the room to attend duty elsewhere. Instead, he pulls a chair from the kitchen table, and drags it to the side of Damian’s hiding place. There is still plenty of room for Damian to duck out, he notes, and the position that Pennyworth is in means that he will not be able to grab him in the process.

Were Damian not nursing a wounded ego, he would think to congratulate Pennyworth on his detective work. Perhaps his father had rubbed off on him, over the years. Perhaps, even, it’s the other way around. Damian bashes _that_ blasphemous thought about the head.

“Doodh pati,” says Pennyworth, tiptoeing with nimble delicacy into the pronunciation. “Is it an important drink to you? I should endeavor to learn it well, if so.”

It takes Damian a while to respond. “Tt. No,” he says, and it is both the biggest lie and the tallest truth he has ever told. “It’s not. At ho—on Nanda Parbat, I would drink it every day. Everyone does.”

The League—it was not all bad. He remembers things, and he remembers them well, things wherein everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. Things phosphorescent, the flickering tones of lightning bugs on the shadows of grass in the night.

“When I was young,” Damian says, “the servant my grandfather assigned to me—Ravi—would prepare it for me after my morning training. He was allowed it, too—it was his break, so we would drink it together. Sometimes, when our company, or lack thereof, permitted, he would tell me stories, or recite poetry, or read to me from books of old and new alike.”

Pennyworth watches him, without speaking. It should be alarming, but it soothes, and Damian feels drowsy almost in the way he does after drinking cough syrup, with sickness to augment following the river Styx into sleep.

“I would take tea with my grandfather, as well.”

The quiet which follows this is pensive, dips into a hollow bowl that Damian finds ringing endlessly. He has half a mind to cover his ears.

“This is no replacement for the solaces of your childhood, but I hope you may enjoy our tea time, anyway.”

Damian wants to say, “I hope so, too,” but he does not. He says nothing at all, and allows the silence to become an awful din.

Eventually, he finds his mouth moving against his will, to fill the silence. “I have always loved Etel Adnan,” he says. “I have been touched by many works, but hers, in particular, have always stuck with me.” He pauses, to study Pennyworth’s face. It reveals nothing, were it not so beauteously kind it could have been carved from stone. “Have you ever read Sea and Fog, Pennyworth?”

“I can’t say that I have,” says Pennyworth.

“You should,” says Damian solemnly, uncurling enough so that his hands hang loosely over his knees, rather than tightly clenched around the sinew of his middle. “You won’t regret it.”

“Then I will,” Pennyworth responds, with stalwart somberness. “I should do well to take your recommendation seriously, with such high praise.”

Damian nods, with distinction.

“I also,” he admits, almost in a murmur, after a few moments, “have a fondness for Arthurian legend. It is one of the stories from your culture I appreciate a lot, I find.”

“A round table of knights is an emboldening idea,” Pennyworth agrees. “My father had a book of such legends. I would read it as a young boy.”

“Did you know,” Damian asks, “that my grandfather knew the real King Arthur?”

“With the awareness that he is over six-hundred years of age, and that he has had a hand in many a part of world history, I have to say that I am not surprised,” says Pennyworth. “Did they ever meet in combat?”

Damian almost smiles, despite himself; he traces the wrinkles under Pennyworth’s eyes with his own. The shadows created by the cabinets which loom over them only accentuate their intensity. Pennyworth is a twelfth of Grandfather’s age, and yet he is wizened to the maximum degree, in comparison.

It is a line of thought that does not bear thinking about, for thinking too long of Pennyworth’s mortality sends Damian’s gut snaking up his throat.

“That is the only way they ever met,” he says. “Grandfather says that watching him fight, and wield Excalibur, was akin to watching poetry in motion. I am under the apprehension that he wishes he could have a chance to wield it for himself. I do not particularly blame him. It is a magnificent sword.”

“From illustrations alone it would be any metalsmith’s magnum opus,” Pennyworth agrees. “While I’ve not much experience with swords, I must concur with you, Master Damian.”

“I would presume your expertise lies more in the area of armed weapons," Damian agrees.

With his eyebrows going sky high, Pennyworth leans forward, in his chair, just slightly. “I was not aware you knew of my first career,” he says.

“Yes,” says Damian, “The League makes it its business to know such things at all times. There is no part of your life that has not been exposed to me. I know everything from your elementary school grades to your preferred brand of toothpaste.”

Were Pennyworth a man of great hair, his eyebrows would have disappeared under its line. As it is, he tilts his head, and chuffs, softly. It is too muted to be a laugh, really, but Damian finds that the sound sparks something in his chest. Mighty steel, strike the flint, and let the world burn.

“Your wit will carry you far in life,” says he. “I presume you procured this information from Master Richard?”

“Master Timothy,” Damian corrects.

“I am glad to hear that you are in a good enough place to hear such things from him,” says Pennyworth. “Although the young Master and I might have a good long talk about withholding things told in confidence.”

Damian considers, while nipping on the edge of his tongue. Shoving himself farther back into his corner, he admits, “It was perhaps... more along the lines of me snooping through his computer files than an actual willing exchange of information.”

Pennyworth mouth—it quirks up. Damian feels as if his heart is wearing mittens, and he hates every minute of it, every minute of this warmth. He does.

“Master Damian,” Pennyworth chides, “You most certainly know better than that.”

“’Knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’ are two very different things, Pennyworth,” Damian points out.

“And as you possess both, you would know that very well," Pennyworth sallies. "Deliberate ignorance is not in good decorum."

Damian finds himself tempted to say something childish, perhaps, "Your face is not in good decorum," or, "I'll show you deliberate ignorance," but he is not so young, now, so instead, he says, "I apologize that my actions upset you, Pennyworth."

"That is a worry for another day, young Master," he says. Shifting, slightly, in such a way that the chair incidentally _creaks!_ , he turns his head to glimpse the pot. From his sequestered space between cabinets, Damian is unable to confirm for himself what the slight humming noise Pennyworth makes indicates. He squirms, slightly, and leverages his back against the wall in an attempt to increment himself upward enough to finagle an explanation as to the state of its waters.

"It has not yet reached a boil," says Pennyworth, interrupting his playing at being an inchworm. Damian folds into himself, and sinks back down. This time, he brings his knees to his chest and clutches his arms around them, a Prometheus who is able to protect his liver. "Now," he continues, "I believe we were on the topic of swords."

"We were extolling the virtues of Excalibur," Damian confirms. "Which makes it high time for me to say that any Celtic longsword is too big for its britches."

Pennyworth affords him an inquiring stare.

"I don't believe I know much about swordsmanship, or swordcraft. It appears, Master Damian, that I am about to become your student for the second time today."

Checking his face for signs of—derision, mockery, ridicule—Damian finds only benign curiosity. It pulses, softly; it is a heartbeat of its own. He looks up at Pennyworth, and speaks to his eyes and face rather than a distant spot on the wall, for the first time that night.

"Well," he says, "the Celtic longsword is aptly named, for it is indeed long, as well as large. It is double bladed, as well. It's a sword geared toward strength, however, and sacrifices maneuverability for power. It is the 'bull in a china shop' of swords."

Pennyworth nods, slowly.

"What is your weapon of choice then, Master Damian?"

"Katana," Damian says immediately. "But when I was with the League, I used a kilij." He waits for Pennyworth's patience to wear, as twine scrubbed against a rock eventually, inevitably, does, but his face reveals nothing. It is so—open—that Damian wants to _scream._ "My particular one was created during the later era of the Mamaluk Sultanate. It was the slayer of a good friend of his. He gave it to me in honor of him." Curling in closer to himself, Damian breaks eye contact with Pennyworth, and lets the cool sheet of wall behind him frostbite over the length of his back. "He says that the ghost of this man is with me."

The burbling notes of water become audible, and Damian jumps at the chance to creep from his hiding place, and avoid that which blossoms in Pennyworth's gaze. He feels, still, even as he sidles toward the stove, that he has been stripped to the bone; he feels that his bones are being pelted with hail until they shriek with the brittle cold.

"Often, the ghosts gifted to us by others are not the only ones which follow us," Pennyworth says, as Damian grasps the teaspoon, and grips it so tightly that his hand shakes.

"Pennyworth..." Damian starts, but then thinks the better of it; he shelves his teeth together and stifles his breath.

"Master Damian," Pennyworth returns, and blessedly, does not move to put a hand on his shoulder, nor touch him in any way. There is silence, soft but wispy, like nimbuses, but then he breaks it, then he says, "Master Damian, you are not your ghosts."

Damian would do well to suppress the full-body shudder which ossifies within him. He does not repress the full-body shudder which ossifies within him.

"Well, Pennyworth," he says, "you would do well to remember the same."

For he sees it, in his eyes. In the way his gaze catches over, at certain moments, in the differences between his respectful silences and the ones that he drowns in. It is something that Damian is intimately familiar with, and so he sees it, in Pennyworth, and he knows. Sometimes, in traipsing over the sands, one finds their feet not only burning, but sinking, too.

Pennyworth seems about to say something, and Damian cannot allow that to happen, so what Damian does instead is blurt, for the second time that night. What Damian does again is say, "Disney."

"Excuse me?" asks Pennyworth.

"On the better of nights like this one," Damian says; he dips into the sugar jar, and painstakingly ladles out three spoonfuls. "Grayson would pull up a video streaming service, and he would have me pick a Disney movie for us to watch. He said that... Disney was a magic like no other, when one excuses their egregious commercialization."

In several deft steps, he picks five cardamom pods from the jar, wraps them in paper towel, and bashes them open to release the seeds. Then, he adds them to the tea.

"You get more flavor, this way," he explains to Pennyworth, and after several moments, when he has done nothing but afford Damian a stringent nod, Damian says, "Well, are you going to pick a movie or not?"

Pennyworth blinks, and then blinks again. He meets Damian's eyes, and Damian, despite himself, lets him. Their blue, of the antifreeze ilk, captures Damian like a snowflake between two plastic sheets, his intricacies captured, unmoving, to be preserved forever in the denouement of their youth.

"Well," he says eventually, "In the spirit of honoring Master Richard, I should think to pick one of his oldest favorites: _Lilo and Stitch._ "

"Grayson likes _Lilo and Stitch?_ " Damian asks.

"He does," Pennyworth confirms.

"... that makes me glad to hear," admits Damian. "I—enjoy Lilo's character."

He looks up toward Pennyworth. The man has abandoned his stone-faced visage for the second time that night in favor of a smile of crooked stars.

"What's so funny?" Damian asks.

"Nothing someone of your youth would find of much interest, nor note," Pennyworth replies. "You should tell Master Richard that, however. It will make his day."

Damian scowls, then reconsiders his scowl; he glances at the tea. It is gaining color, nicely; soon, it will be rich, and bold, and beautiful.

"Pennyworth," Damian says, in the softest scorn of voice he has ever heard from himself. He feels the inescapable urge to return to his earlier position between the cabinets. "I believe... that this has been a much more enjoyable tea preparation experience than I have been used to with my grandfather. You... share Ravi's soul. It is wrong, to say such things, but—I thought to thank you."

"You do not have to thank me, Master Damian," Pennyworth says, with such solemnity that the air stops, to listen for a while. "I can only imagine how difficult it must be to have to reconcile your conflicting feelings toward that man."

Damian sinks his teeth into his lip. "Comprehending..." he starts, and then stops. "Knowing..." He tries again. "It has helped," he says finally, "me come to terms with the sort of man my grandfather is, to know someone else who has shown me what a—healthy relationship looks like. To know what is meant, when one says, 'kindness.'"

"Master Richard is indeed a special individual," Pennyworth agrees.

"He is," Damian agrees, "but I was not talking about him."

**Author's Note:**

> i recently made a [tumblr](https://icosagens.tumblr.com). come say hi, if you'd like! 💕


End file.
